Conferencia ICTA
Christopher Hamlin "The 'Philosophy' of Water"

According to Professor Hamlin, this would be “something broader on environmental history” but it would link historical cases to contemporary and ongoing problems in a way which would lend itself to a comparative analysis. It would draw mainly from problems that arise in legal contexts, but move to reconceive in terms of general philosophical problems.

The chief argument of this paper is that much recent writing on improving the provision of water to human beings, especially that following the UNO’s articulation of water as a human right earlier in this decade, is insufficiently grounded in the physical and chemical characteristics of water. This paper complements my own earlier work, which focused on the multiple meanings of water, as well as the work of Jamie Linton on the implications of the hydrologic cycle model as the ruling concept in thinking about water*. My approach is eclectic: it builds on water history, epidemiology, and physical geography, as well as on phenomenology and social ethics. I conclude by exploring the concept of water as gift as an alternative to water as right or water as commodity.

* Christopher Hamlin, `Waters’ or `Water’?. Master narratives in water history and their implications for contemporary water policy. Water Policy. 2000, 2 (4-5): 313-325; Jamie Linton, Is the Hydrologic Cycle Sustainable? A Historical. Geographical Critique of a Modern Concept, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98(3) 2008, 630-649.

Professor Christopher Hamlin [http://www.nd.edu/~chamlin/] is trained as an historian of science. He is author of A Science of Impurity (1990), dealing with the history of concepts of water quality, and Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick (1998), dealing with the emergence of modern public health. He is currently at work on a book examining the history of ideas about particular natural processes, ranging from population stability to decomposition. Hamlin teaches courses on science and technology studies, the history of medicine, the history of technology, and environmental history.

B.A. Antioch College Earth Sciences 1974M.A., Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison History of Science 1977, 1982

Department of History, Program in Science, Technology, and Values, and Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Notre DameProfessor, Department of History, 1998-Honorary Professor, Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 2003-

Publications: six books and 40 articles in books and refereed journals

What Becomes of Pollution? Adversary Science and the Controversy on the Self-Purification of Rivers in Britain, 1850-1900, (New York: Garland, 1987)

A Science of Impurity: Water Analysis in Nineteenth Century Britain (Bristol England: Adam Hilger, Ltd./Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990)

“The History of Methods in Social Epidemiology to 1965,” in J. Michael Oakes, ed., Methods in Social Epidemiology (Jossey Bass, 2005), 21-45.

(With David Lodge,) “Beyond Lynn White: Religion, the Contexts of Ecology, and the Flux of Nature,” Introduction, in Lodge and Hamlin, eds., Religion and the New Ecology (University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 1-25

(With David Lodge,) “Ecology and Religion for a Post Natural World,” conclusion, in Lodge and Hamlin, eds., Religion and the New Ecology (University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 279-309.

“Good and Intimate Filth” in Filth and Culture, Ryan Johnson and William Cohen eds. ( University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 3-29..

“Sanitary Policing and the Local State, 1873-74: A Statistical Study of English and Welsh Towns” Social History of Medicine Social History of Medicine 18 (2005): 39-61

“THIRD WAVE SCIENCE STUDIES: Toward a History and Philosophy of Expertise?,” in Martin Carrier, Don Howard, and Janet Kourany eds., The Challenge of the Social and the Pressure of Practice: Science and Values Revisited (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 160-185)